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According to bits of information scattered around the MSDN website, since Windows 7 most of the drivers have been moved to userspace already. Even the graphics driver for Windows now is half userspace half kernelspace. Perhaps it is no coincidence that this was the reason Windows 7 and Windows 8 suddenly became so stable (my speculation only).

[P]rostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia ... should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.
Some rules might be called for when these acts directly affect other people's interests. For incest, contraception could be mandatory to avoid risk of inbreeding. For prostitution, a license should be required to ensure prostitutes get regular medical check-ups, and they should have training and support in insisting on use of condoms. This will be an advance in public health, compared with the situation today.
For necrophilia, it might be necessary to ask the next of kin for permission if the decedent's will did not authorize it. Necrophilia would be my second choice for what should be done with my corpse, the first being scientific or medical use. Once my dead body is no longer of any use to me, it may as well be of some use to someone. Besides, I often enjoy rhinophytonecrophilia (nasal sex with dead plants).

Quote Originally Posted by Richard Stallman

I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.

Quote Originally Posted by Richard Stallman

There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.
Granted, children may not dare say no to an older relative, or may not realize they could say no; in that case, even if they do not overtly object, the relationship may still feel imposed to them. That's not willing participation, it's imposed participation, a different issue.

What do you guys think of this? Do you agree with him or not? I'm a big fan of Linux and his work (GNU), but I have a hard time understanding what he meant here.

I know some people are offended by these comments, but I don't know.

What are your thoughts?

I agree with Stallman

Laws against paedophiles and child porno are just stupid and unfair. I mean if it's rape then it should be illegal.

But if the minor consents, I don't see a problem with that. But dumb idiotic cultural norms dictates the law.

Stallman's view is that the law should not be dictated in that way. If people can understand that reasoning (and it's a very rational reasoning), they'll realise how stupid the laws against paedophiles and child porno are and also how discriminatory it is.

I don't think Richard Stallman likes calling GNU something else. Linux is really impressive and I'm glad it exists; when used with GNU gets even better, but GNU is just GNU regardless of the name of its now fallen-behind kernel. The reasons for the term "GNU/Linux" have nothing to do with systematically calling operating systems after user space system tools plus kernel. If that were the case "GNU/GNU Mach" would be a better name, since GNU Mach is the only part of Hurd running on kernel mode.

The redundancy in Debian GNU/Hurd is sort more of a careless homage to Debian GNU/Linux being one of the few distros explicitly acknowledging GNU in their name. Ironically, the only existing fully GNU distro to my knowledge in addition to Debian, that is Arch Hurd, hasn't adopted the name "GNU" either.

I like saying "Windows NT" instead of "Windows" though, it helps distinguishing from MS-DOS-based Windows. Tangential pieces of crap

Comment

Laws against paedophiles and child porno are just stupid and unfair. I mean if it's rape then it should be illegal.

But if the minor consents, I don't see a problem with that. But dumb idiotic cultural norms dictates the law.

Stallman's view is that the law should not be dictated in that way. If people can understand that reasoning (and it's a very rational reasoning), they'll realise how stupid the laws against paedophiles and child porno are and also how discriminatory it is.

I also agree with BOSS on Hurd. Even Stallman does not support Hurd anymore

Hurd is turd!!!!
Hurd is turd!!!!
Hurd is turd!!!!
Hurd is turd!!!!
Hurd is turd!!!!

Sorry, aren't you the Solaris fan? So, people like kraftman, BSD-xxx, slowlaris were actually right attacking you? Well, thanks for saying all above, that proves who you are.

Comment

I love Hurd progress, but they HAVE to change name, it simply hurts spread. : /
How about "GNU kernel" instead?

With the same reasoning you could say that GNU should change the name and call itself “Linux userland” because GNU is unpronouncable to US americans. But you fall into a big trap with that: Would you discuss here, if it were about the new GNU kernel which uses the old GNU Mach and the Hurd design, but changed the name? Never change an established brand.

And if you look at this from a pure PR perspective: Would you give up the name which made it into xkcd as a definition of how to do it right (but too slow)? That’s a kind of spread which is really, really hard to get otherwise. And you can dispell the bad connotations by simply getting it working while getting the good connotations for a new project is really hard: http://xkcd.com/844/

Every reader of xkcd knows the Hurd, and knows that the Hurd people do it right but don’t ever get anything done. And when he or she looks at the Hurd page, the progress visible there shows that the Hurd people actually do get things done, even though they do it right. http://hurd.gnu.org

There are a multitude of jokes about how the Hurd hurts and people heard about the hurd and decided it was only for nerds. But the herd keeps moving forward in its own pace, and the herd of gnus is actually a really strong image which I expect to catch hold when the Hurd is ready for general usage.

- 10 years ago the Hurd crashed under a bit of load, so Gentoo GNU/Hurd was impossible: You could not compile the packages. Most compilation of bigger packages was done by crosscompiling on GNU/Linux.
- 5 years ago the Hurd hosted its own wiki, but the wiki was slow and we mostly worked on it by directly editing the data in the VCS backend.
- Nowadays the Hurd packages are compiled on Hurd VMs, and the Hurd is stable enough for setting up continuous testing. And the wiki is really fast.